NEW DELHI The RTI (Amendment) Bill, scaling down the stature and tenure of information commissioners, was passed in Rajya Sabha on Thursday as the government managed to garner additional support from non-NDA parties such as the TRS and the BJD.

Though the Congress resisted the move, even mounting a personal attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and staging a walkout, the motion for sending the amendment to the select committee was defeated with 117 members voting against it and 75 voting in favour.

Leading the Congress charge was senior party leader Jairam Ramesh who said the government was trying to dilute the Central Information Commissioner’s power via the RTI Amendment Bill because “of a personal peeve”.

“There is personal angle to this. The CIC had ordered the Delhi University to disclose his (PM’s) graduation record (in 2016). In fact, a case in this regard is being heard in Delhi High Court today,” said Ramesh on Thursday.

Ramesh further said that the CIC order to DU is not the only reason for which the PM is clipping powers of information commissioners. According to him, there are five other CIC orders on RTI, which have upset the PM, including its diktat to disclose the amount of black money brought back into the country by the incumbent government and its order on demonetisation.

Expressing surprise over the timing of the Bill, Ramesh pointed out that the provision to bring CIC on a par with Supreme Court judges was made following recommendations of a Standing Committee in 2005. It was done to make the RTI body independent, he said. He also said, “I was deeply into drafting the law. I must tell you that the Standing Committee also had BJP members, including our President Ram Nath Kovind, Bal Apte and Vijay Malhotra.

In his response to the Opposition’s criticism, senior BJP leader Bhupendra Yadav said, “Jairam’s remarks show that the BJP also contributed to the making of the RTI Act and that we are not opposed to RTI per se.”

In his reply, Union Minister of DoPT, Jitendra Singh, rebutted the Congress charge that it was a deliberate move to dilute the power of the information commissioners. “There is no question of vengeance. This is all I have to say to learned member Jairamji,” he said.

To allay the Opposition’s fears Singh said that the government was in favour of transparency and putting information in the public domain. He reminded critics of the Bill about the mobile app through which RTI queries can be raised anytime during the day.